


this is the outline of my own destruction

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Howard centric, Howard's sort of a bad dad, There's Some Death, the first avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-10 08:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14733960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: He wakes up to dreams that are not his own.About oceans.  About deep blue and stinging salt, cracks spiderwebbing across a windshield and the moment where you give in and breathe, damn it, breath even though it'll kill you, and a voice whispering to you through the radio, crackling over the static.About drowning.About death.About sacrifice.





	this is the outline of my own destruction

**Author's Note:**

> for those of you following this series, it's kind of taking a break from my Pepper/Tony stuff, but I hope you'll still like it,

He wakes up to dreams that are not his own.

About oceans.  About deep blue and stinging salt, cracks spiderwebbing across a windshield and the moment where you give in and  _breathe,_ damn it, breathe even though it'll kill you, and a voice whispering to you through the radio, crackling over the static.

About drowning.

About death.

About sacrifice.

 

 

When Captain America died, it meant the war was over.

He ended it, in a way, even it was already gone.  That's what the newspaper headlines said, anyways, even if the people didn't understand- didn't know of the disaster that he had diverted, could not wrap their minds around the idea of all of them blinking out of existence in a single second at the heels of a blistering wave of heat, how one little bomb ( _relatively little, anyway, compared to the violence it holds_ ) could have changed the nation.  They were mourning for him, for the great Captain America, but not really, because they were too busy thinking of what he had ensured they did not lose- their fathers and brothers and husbands coming home from war, the food returning to their table, not having to spend so much time on their prayers at night without being sure they were ever going to be answered.  

(It's wasn't mourning, what they were doing, not really.  It was making him into half a legend and half a god, immortalizing him, entering him into the never ending memory of the America spirit.  A hero to outlast all heroes.)

But people were mourning Steve.

 

 

 

Howard saw them, once, when he was meeting Peggy.  Surprising Peggy.  Ambushing her.  Something.

The Howling Commandos.

He'd met them all, because they all traveled at Steve's heels, flanking him every where he went, even when it was clear that he would rather be alone.  He'd given them their weapons and gave their leader his infamous shield.  He'd been the one to give them their leader, actually.

They were in a circle, one silent somber huddle in the midst of all the celebration, because even if all these soldiers were going home, Steve was not.  People all around them were screaming and crying and laughing in time with each new announcement, another province fallen to the American Dream and another concentration camp freed, boys becoming boys again, dreaming of the moment when they would get to fall back into the arms of their mothers, maybe not believing it yet.  

But not them.  They were raising a toast to the one they had lost, the man who had allowed them to all go home, who had given them back their freedom.  They were crying, a few of them, tears slipping down their cheeks as they raised their glasses, not to the great Captain America, the American Hero, but Steve Rogers, the scrawny boy from Brooklyn who didn't know how to walk away from a fight.  

Howard thought about joining them, but he didn't, just stayed at the bar and made a toast of his own, until Peggy came to stand beside him.  He knew it was Peggy without looking, because she made every man in the bar turn their heads to follow her path towards him, and every man in the bar turned back to their drinks as soon as they realized who it was.  Peggy was not a woman who allows people to stare.  At least not twice.

"He thought we were a thing, you know."  He hadn't.  Or maybe he had.  Howard was so used to being the center of attention that he's stopped noticing, even when it might be hurting the people around him.  Even when it might be better for him to turn to a kid who didn't know any better, a guy he considered his friend, and tell him  _hey, she's into you.  Go for it._ It would have been kinder.  "All because you asked me for fondue."

Howard winced, knocks his drink back, tries to chase away his guilt with the taste of cheap whiskey.  It doesn't work.  "Peggy."  He wants to reach for her.  To tell her sorry.  To say that he knew the real Steve, the one that was human and not a god made of memories that never happened.  To give her some shred of comfort.

Peggy just shakes her head, curls bouncing with the movement.  "Not today, Howard."

Later, she was saying.  Later we'll talk.  But they never did.  Not about that.

 

 

 

"You're different now,"  Maria tells him when he gets back.  She is different than he remembers, too, but she is just as soft, just as good at calming the storm that rages along inside of him.  "Not a bad different."  Her hands are moving to undo the buttons on his shirt and even though he had dreamed about this when he was overseas, even though he had long since realized how stupid it was to take this for granted, he has to fight the urge to push it away.  "Just more grown up."

 _I was only playing before,_ he thinks, but draws her closer instead of speaking, kicks the door closed, even though his mind is already moving to a blueprint that he has not yet drawn, one of grid lines and oceans and the outline of a submarine that could go deeper and father on less fuel and with less ability to be detected by radar.  The frame of it is glowing golden in his mind, and when she falls asleep, he traces the figures onto her back, working out the problems before he even puts the idea down on paper.

 

 

See, the thing is, he had never met a problem that he couldn't solve.

That's what he told all the teachers when he went to school, and that's what he told his mother when she told him she was worried about his ambition, and that's what he told Maria on their first date back when he was only starting to realize what he could become, when she got trapped in the manic energy of his ideas and he tricked her into believing it was magic.  And it's what he told the government agents when they came calling, too, telling him about an idea that they couldn't quite reach on their own.

About the war to come.  About advancing technologies.  About a man turned more, of his own words, how peace is bought by the man with the bigger stick.

"We need that stick,"  They had said, and threw the papers down for him to look at.  "We can't protect the people without it."

 

 

(At least, that's what he had said, to his wife and his mother and to Peggy when they asked, and its what he repeated to all the reporters and eventually to the cameras, about how he was doing it for the greater good, but that was the lie.

The truth is this: He makes weapons because it is what the world needs, because it is what people are willing to buy, but it had started back when he was younger and his mind would not stop spinning.  It would churn out answers faster than he could be given questions, and Howard was just bored, so bored, had always been bored, except for those rare moments where the inventing seemed like a lightning strike, when he was burning with his own glory.

He was so damn tired of being bored.)

 

 

Once the war dies down, he goes to the memorial service for Steve.  There's no body, so a monument is the best they can give him, that and the promise that his name will forever be written in the history books.  He's one of the few civilians allowed to attend, and he feels half honored and half like he would like nothing more than to not be here.

When he leaves, Peggy follows him.  He knows its her because no other woman has footsteps that sound like that, like a man's.

"Howard."  Her eyes are asking questions.  They are also bloodshot, rimmed with shadows that she does not bother to cover up like the other girls he knew would.  "Any luck?"

Meaning,  _I heard that you're still making weapons, that submarine you told me you were designing to find Steve sure did make you a pretty penny._ Meaning,  _I heard you throw his name around on that radio interview last week, what gave you the right to claim him as your own._ Meaning,  _please tell me that some of that time you spend floating through the ocean with your guidelines in your compass have paid off,_ meaning  _don't stay down there so long that I lose you, too._

"Not yet."  He puts his hand on her arm, his thumb just brushing underneath the fabric of her short sleeves.  A picture of the gesture would make headlines in some magazine he hadn't heard of before, throwing accusations like they're the same thing as proof.  Maria didn't speak to him for three days because of it.  "But I will."

See, he was still stupid enough to believe that the world didn't hold a question he could not solve.

 

 

 

He's got a son. 

He's a tiny thing.  Tinier than he should be, the doctors said.  Fragile.  Breakable.

It might have worried other fathers, but not Howard.  Howard was strong enough for the both of them, he was creating a legacy that would keep his family safe for centuries, ensuring that the Starks were always going to be the ones with the bigger stick.  This boy would never have to want for anything, not while Howard was here to give it to him.  And anyways, just because he was sickly now doesn't mean he always would be.  Howard was holding greatness in his hands, and he knew it.  All this fragile thing needed was some time to grow, a few guiding hands to shape him.

( _Unless,_ a voice whispered.   _Unless something happens to you, takes you away before he is ready, you've seen how fast it comes, sometimes you don't even see it coming-_ _stop.  Those are thoughts from the war.  This is not the war, anymore.)_

"What's his name?"  Peggy says, half breathless.  She was the godmother.  Maria had asked her three weeks ago when she was over for dinner and Peggy had broken down and cried, the first time that Howard had known her to do so since Steve disappeared under the water.

 _Steve,_ Howard was about to say, because that had been the one thing that he had asked of Maria when she found out she was pregnant.  It had a twisted sort of logic behind it, like if he named his child Steve then this time round he would be able to protect him, to ensure that nothing bad would happen.  A do over of sorts.  But now that he was looking down at him, at his son, he could not force himself to say the name.

He did not deserve that shadow.

"Anthony."  He says instead, and ignores the look Maria sends him, which is easy, because Peggy is already taking Tony from Howard's arms and holding him like she knew exactly how special this child is.  "Anthony Stark."

 

 

 

"Stop looking."  Maria hadn't asked him that before, but she is asking it of him now, with Tony hanging onto her hand and hiding behind her skirts.  There is anger on her face, but more than that, she looks tired, so tired, and he knows why- it was because Tony had been sick for the past three days and he had only finally stopped coughing for the night.  Howard had tried to talk her into letting the staff handle it, just for an hour, just so she had a break, but she had shot the idea down as quickly as he suggested it.

 _You really don't get it,_ she had said, scathing, and then set herself outside the door, head resting on the doorframe, spending the rest of the night listening to him cry even though there was nothing for her to do, because all the doctors (and they were the best doctors, Howard could make sure of that, if nothing else) had all assured him that all he needed was sleep.

"He's gone, Howard."  He didn't know why she had to do it now, down here, with the kid hanging off of her.  "Why won't you give it up?"

This was like all their other arguments, where she would beg for him to stay home and he would leave anyways, where she would ask him to eat dinner as a family and he would just ask JARVIS to bring his meal back down to the workshop, where she would beg him to tell her the truth and always be disappointed when he stays silent.

He opens his mouth to try and wave her concerns away, maybe come up with an excuse solid enough to withstand her disappointment, but then there's a clatter from behind and he turns to find Tony, frozen, a glass of milk up ended over all of his blueprints.

Howard feels his eyes closed, and opens them again to see both Maria and Tony frozen, Tony waiting to see what was going to happen next.  To see if he was going to yell and rage and throw things, like Howard had the other times he had dared to act like a kid.  Five years old and already afraid of his father, when all Howard ever wanted to was protect him.

"Just get out,"  He says instead, feeling nothing instead of anger and wondering if that was worth.  "Just leave me alone."

 

 

 

 _You want to know the truth?_ He thinks, watching Maria sleep.  He wants to lay down beside her but knows that his momentum will inevitably carry him back to the workshop, so he doesn't even try.   _You want to know why I cannot stop?_

_Because he's alive.  I turned him into something indestructible and damned him instead, and no one knows it but me.  No one wants to know it._

 

 

The thing is, Howard does his job well.

Always.

So when they came to him and asked if he could make a man indestructible, he said that he probably could, with a lot of help and a little luck.  That there was no reason to say that he couldn't, when all the evidence says that no one else had even tried.  And as it turns out, he had gone to do exactly that.

It was all fun and games, even when he thought that the machine might kill the skinny guy that Peggy seemed so enamored with.  It got even more fun when Steve went from someone who he occasionally sees splashed across propaganda posters to someone that he flies across the border to save a bunch of POWs, where he saw that this little guy might win this big war.  It was still fun when Bucky died, really, because even though he cared for him and they were friends and that he was just as big of a flirt as Howard was, he was only human, only a solider, only a man.  Certain casualities are to be expected, even when they hurt.

But not Steve.  Steve was something that Howard created, a mold that he shaped.  There was no other reason for him to be in this big war other than the fact that Howard made it so he was able to be, and in the end, it didn't turn him into a hero.  It turned him into a martyr, and if Howard's calculations are right (and they are always, always right) he is sitting somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, not awake but not asleep either, until someone finally digs him up.  

And God help them all if it turns out to be the wrong person who finds him.

 

 

 

 Tony is eleven, and doing some project about World War Two.

He goes to a special school, one that costs a lot of money and filled with kids that are considered smart but still are not half as smart as him.  Howard hadn't noticed, but somewhere along the line, Tony had turned into a carbon copy of how he looked as a child, only he was so much better, so much brighter.

( _He's just like you,_ Maria cried, the first time Tony had burnt himself down in the lab, making some robot that Howard hadn't had a clue he was building.  All that time, he had thought he was just messing around with the parts.  He enrolled him in the school for advanced students the next day.  He wished Maria hadn't acted like it was the worst thing she could ever think for her child to grow into, but Howard understand.  She just wanted him to be better.)

"It's about the concentration camps,"  Tony said brightly, poking his head around the poster board, and Howard was interested, he always is, even if he isn't, so he turns the research paper around and reads, about the phycology behind antisemitism and how people turned against their neighbors, the punishment and the numbers killed and stories of the more sadistic guards.  It is twelve pages.  Howard remembers hearing Tony tell Jarvis that the teacher only asked for eight.  "Does it look alright?"

 _Say something,_ Howard thinks,  _tell him that it's great, that's he's great, that it's more detailed than you thought anything an eleven year old made would be, that his title is catchy even if the letters are lopsided, that you're proud of him, that you love him, jesus, say anything at all._

"It wasn't like that,"  He says instead, pointing down to a picture of a pretty Jewish girl flanked by two American soldiers, because now he is remembering touching down in the middle of the camp and walking off with a sort of swagger.  He had hundreds of relief packages at his back, and was there on a special mission, because there was a problem with the international delegations and the aid couldn't get through.  Howard had thought himself half a hero, expecting people to thank him, to fall at his feet- and they had, but it was only because they were going for the food but were too weak to stand.  Someone ( _he would learn later she was only fifteen, she looked closer to forty_ ) clawed at his pant leg with skeleton hands and Howard had to fight off the revulsion, stop himself from kicking her away.  Instead, he bent down to the ground and raised her up, let her lean on him when he sat her against a stack of crates and spooned soup into her mouth, let her lean on him again when she threw it back up, and listened to her say that she does not think she can keep anything down, because it all tastes like ashes.

 _I've been choking on ashes for months now,_ She had said, and Howard won't forget it as long as he lives, he remembers it with every mouthful of food he dares to take for granted, the hollows in her cheeks and the look in her eyes, the gaping holes where her teeth should be.   _My friends, my mother, strangers.  I can taste it in my dreams._

 

 

 

"You knew him right?"  Tony said, gesturing at the display of Captain America at the Smithsonian.  It was a feeble attempt at conversation, but at least he was trying.

"Yes."  But he knew that.  Tony used to beg for stories, back when he had Captain America sheets and t-shirts and even an action figure that Aunt Peggy had brought him for his sixth birthday.  Now he's resentful of him, like its some shadow that he has to fill up.  Howard knows he's to blame for that, that his entire childhood was taken up by a dead man, but he can't help it.  There are some obsessions that you can't pull yourself away from, even when it's a lost cause.  "He was my friend."

Howard forgets that sometimes.  That they were friends, even with everything else stuck between them.  

 _He was going to be your godfather, once.  I had it all planned out._ That was a secret that only Peggy knew.    _He would have been your namesake, but I thought that this would be kinder.  I have tried to do right by you, no matter what you think._

"Did you fight?"  It was a rare moment of interest in his life.  Tony has learned not to ask questions, but maybe here in this portal to the past, he thought the rule was lifted.  

"No."  He hadn't been allowed.  Bad heart.  Hadn't stopped him from throwing himself in the fight anyways.  It had been dangerous, but hey- at least he hadn't been bored.  

"Too good for the draft, huh?"  Tony said, like he knew, and maybe he thought he did.  This is all they are good at- pushing forward and pulling apart until neither one of them can stand the other.  "Don't blame you."  He quiets, staring back at the pictures of guns and dying men.  "I wouldn't want to be a part of that, either."

 

 

He's got a soft heart, Tony.  Too soft.

"I'm not making that."  They are having a stand off in the workshop, each of them on either side of the table, Jarvis in the corner.  "You can't make me."

"It's easy."  It was easy.  It was only a grenade.  Tony could make it in his sleep.  "I can help if you need me."

He meant it to be a comfort.  To show Tony that he trusted him.  Howard's not sure how he keeps making all the wrong moves.  

"I mean I'm not doing it because I don't want to.  I'm never making anything like that."  He actually backs away from the table, like Howard might force it on him.  "I don't want other people's blood on my hands."

"You have to.  This is what you're meant for."  Howard is not sure why he is saying these things, where these words come from.   "This is what it means to be a Stark.  It's what it means to be my son."

Tony stares at him, and its clear he has taken those words for something that Howard hadn't meant.  He shoves away from the table, and Howard knew he was going to let the door slam closed behind him.  "Then I guess I'm not a Stark."

The door does slam, and a second later, it closes again, softly, the sound of Jarvis running after him, more of a father than Howard ever learned to be.  

 _This is what keeps us safe,_ he thinks, his hands moving to assemble the grenade himself, thinking of the skeleton girl from the camp and Steve under the water and gunfire pinging at the bottom of a plane.   _It's us or them, and I will not let it be you, no matter what I have to do._

 

 

That had been their worst argument, which was strange, because it was only a few words.  Howard felt guilty for days afterward, but in the end, he was grateful, because when he had to send Tony away, he had a ready made excuse.

 

 

There were whispers.

About someone like Steve.

That the technology had been reverse engineered by Hydra. 

That he already had a kill list, and Howard was on it.

"Like the Captain?"  Maria asks when he explains it to her, and it hurts, still, that she never got to know him as Steve.  "Someone that strong?"

"Yes."  They're both down in the workshop.  Howard's got all the doors locked, has installed all the security that money can buy, but he is still terrified.  He has seen what this man can do, and he does not want to die like that.  

"Coming for you?"  Another yes.  "And me?"

Howard squeezes his eyes shut, because as much as he does not want to die like that, he does not want it to happen to her.  This person, whoever he is, kills with his own bare hands.  His mercy is brutal.  

"And Tony?"  It's a whisper.   And another yes.

 

 

 

He sends him to MIT.

Tony's only fourteen, and as much as he seems to be happy about it, to get away from Howard and find some freedom, it is clear that he is terrified, too.  

"Well, that's it then."  Tony slams the trunk of the car over his bags, leans against it.  He's wearing designed jeans.  Howard never thought that anyone in his family would be the type to wear designer jeans.  "You going to miss me?"

(He is trying to be brave.  Stalling for time. He did not want to go.)

"I could make weapons."  Tony says, taking two steps closer to him, apparently giving up what dignity he thought he had and throwing caution to the wind.  "I'd be good at it."

He already was making weapons.  It started two nights after Howard had told him it was time to go to school, where he peered over Howard's shoulder and caught a flaw that no one else would have even thought to look for, increasing speed by thirteen percent, like if he proved himself useful Howard might let him stick around.

He wishes.  Wishes that he knew how to tell him the truth without scaring him, wishes he could make this place feel more like a home. Wishes that MIT wasn't the safest place for him, and wishes that it wasn't Jarvis who was helping him move in.  But it doesn't matter what he wishes, because what he does is sticks out his hand and watches Tony laugh instead of shake it.

"Alright."  He throws himself into the car with a snarl, flips the sunglasses down over his eyes.  "Later, dad."

 

 

He never calls.

Howard hadn't really expected him to, because they didn't talk when they lived in the same house and their communication wasn't going to be any better when they were miles away from each other, but still, he had been hoping.  It would have been nice to be like one of the other dads, the ones who know who their kids teachers are and takes them to baseball games and knows the names of their best friends.

Not that he doesn't know it, it's just that he hears it all from Jarvis, who tells it to him with a look on his face like he can't figure out if this is the right thing to do or if this was a betrayal of Tony's trust.  Howard didn't care.  He would take what he could get.  "So he has friends, then?"  Maria had been worried about that.  Tony had such a hard time making friends anyways, it seemed cruel to dump him in the middle of strangers that were never going to look at him as one of their own, where he would always be trying to break into places where he was not supposed to follow.  Howard had just waved her off, telling her it was better to be lonely than alive, but now he's wondering if he could not have found a better solution if he had thought about it longer.  

"A friend."  Jarvis blames him for this.  He misses Tony.  Howard doesn't know how to tell him that it had to be done.  "Rhodey.  He's his room mate.  Looks after him, from what I've heard."

A friend.  Singular.  And from the sound of it, it was only out of some obligation that he was sticking around.

 _Better alive and lonely than here and watching his back for a danger that he doesn't even know is real,_ Howard thought, turning his back and catching sight of one of those robots Tony had made.  Howard had made him lock them all up because they were constantly underfoot.  Seems like the one thing Tony forgot to add to them was a protocol for an off switch.   _I've only ever done what I have to._

 

 

Howard doesn't sleep much, anymore.

He tries.  That's not the issue.  He's gone to doctors and tried the pills and sworn off coffee, bought luxury noise maker machines so he could fall asleep to the sound of the ocean even though he hates the beach, choked down the chamomile tea that Maria made him every night because she thought it would calm him down a bit, ward off the bad dreams.  Nothing works, so he lays down each night for a few hours of fitful sleep and gives himself over to the idea that he will inevitably be woken.

(He dreams of the war.  Of Steve.  Of his own sins.  Howard can't get away from them.)

This time, when he drags himself out of bed and heads down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, the lights are already on.  It's only then that he remembers that Tony was home for the holiday.  A better father wouldn't have forgotten, but Tony had been a ghost since he arrived a week ago, and other than a brief conversation before Tony ducked into his room on the day he had arrived, Howard hadn't seen him.

"Hey."  Tony was so shocked by the sight of him that he had forgotten to be angry.  "What are you doing up?"

"Could ask you the same.  It's, what?" Howard squints over at the clock.  "Three in the morning?"

"I'm a teenager."  Tony leans back, stretches.  He's gotten taller.  Howard hadn't noticed before.  "Party all night and sleep all day, that's our motto."

Except that it wasn't.  Howard might not know much about his son but he knew that he was tired.  If he hadn't been able to tell from the circles under his eyes or the way he hadn't seemed to have washed his hair in a week, he would have known something was wrong from this- the fact that he apparently came down to sit in the kitchen every night and stare at the walls, like that's actually preferable to sleep.

Howard stops between opening the fridge and digging out the creamer to stare at his son.  "You alright, Tony?"

"We going to talk now, dad?"  Tony's mouth twitched up in a smile, but it did not look happy, just disappointed, like he keeps expecting something and Howard never actually delivers.  "Compare bad dreams?"

It threw Howard off balance, just like he knew it was supposed to.   _How did you know,_ he wanted to ask, but maybe he also wanted to say something more, sit down at the counter beside him and actually talk for once, tell Tony the truth about his father for once in his life.   _It's always water, always oceans, and this time there was Steve but there was also more, a whole line of men just like him, men that I made that way because I wanted to be able to say that I had done something extraordinary, all of them encased in the ice and I'm trying to free them, I am, Tony, I swear, but the glass never breaks and when it does there is only more, I would keep gong but by then I have cut my hands and I am drowning, what do you say to that, Tony, what are your dreams like?_

He's tempted.  But then again, Tony is only sixteen, and sixteen is much too young to hear things like that, to have the faults of your parents spread out before you.  That's when you really have to grow up, when you look at your parents and realize that they are no longer infallible, that they are only mortals.

"Go to bed, Tony."  He snaps at him.  Howard hadn't meant to snap.  It's only that he's so tired.  Always so, so tired.  "And wash your hair, will you?"

 

 

"We have to tell him, don't we?"  Maria is peering over his shoulder, looking down at crime scene photographs, and it is clear that even though she hadn't argued when they sent Tony away, even though she hadn't done so much as shake her head as Howard installed guards and fences and cameras, she had not believed him that this man was no more than a ghost of the war that only existed in Howard's head.   Seeing it with your own eyes is harder to argue with.  "We have to warn him that this is coming."

Howard only shook his head, sent it all crashing off the table with a sweep of his arm.  Jarvis would see it in the morning, but it doesn't matter.  The man had long stopped asking questions.

"It wouldn't do any good to scare him."  Howard was aching. The doctors tell him that its only stress, but Howard knows that it is only the fact that he has become old without noticing it.   "You cannot run from this."

 

 

New years.  1991.  Howard is crammed on a sequined covered couch between his wife and Peggy, holding a drink that he cannot force himself to swallow.  He does not know where his son is.

Somewhere behind him, there is a woman repeating that it is the end of an era.  That they are about to witness a rebirth of the American spirit.  She's drunk, and Howard is tempted to turn around and ask her to explain herself, poke holes in her sentences until she regains her common sense and stops speaking.  But he doesn't.  Arguing with drunks is fun, but its a habit that Maria had begged him to break after their third ruined dinner party.

"I won't have any friends, if you keep this up," she had said, genuinely unhappy, and back then he would have done anything to keep her happy, so he kept his mouth shut back then just like he does now, even when the woman in question sneaks up behind them and grabs onto his shoulders, tips over the couch to shriek into their ears.  Her voice is unpleasantly nasally.

"It's the age of miracles, isn't it Mr. Stark?"  She says, and seems to be waiting for an answer.

 _No, darling, its the age of monsters,_ he is thinking, and it is right on the tip of his tongue, but then he remembers Maria's plea of a nice night and swallows it.

 

 

(Here's the thing about the person with the bigger stick calling all the shots: everyone wants to be that person.

So when Howard helped America role out a monstrosity of a man that singlehandedly won that big war, everyone else took a look at it and started wondering what they could do, if they just pushed a little further, thought a little bigger.   This world has become an assembly line for advanced humans, and SHIELD is kidding themselves if they think this Winter Soldier is the only one.

Not that Howard's going to be the one to point it out.  He decided long ago that this new generation of monsters can be fought by a new wave of heroes.  He's done.)

 

 

 

Tony is spinning out of control.

That's what Howard tries to tell him when he comes home on break, because he has spent all year watching his name be splashed across tabloids and newspaper and heard his blunders be broadcasted instead of all his successes, and he wants to help him.  It seems like forever since he had been young enough to need Howard's protection, an eternity since the day that the doctors had told Howard that his son was forever going to be fragile enough for this world to break him, a lifetime ago that Howard swore that it wouldn't matter how small that Tony was, because Howard was strong enough.

But as it turns out, he wasn't, because there are things in this world stronger than Howard, and no number of guns can keep them away.

"You have to stop this."  He'd actually tried to read a book on parenting before Tony came home for the winter, try to find the right way to approach this subject, but no dice.  "It's going to ruin you."

"You mean you, right?"  Tony says, and he is not even looking at Howard, just piecing together parts for another stupid robot that Howard will have to take care of while he is gone.  "You and your precious reputation."

"No."  He wants this to be easier.  He wants to be the person that he needs.  He wants to be better, wants to keep Tony from falling victim to the same flaws that Howard had.  The world was a scary place when your brain moved faster than everyone else's.  He would have thought that he and Tony would get along better, seeing as how they're the only people whose minds go at the same speed.  "That's not what I meant."

Tony looked up, then, and smiled, a fleeting motion across his face.  "It's alright, dad.  I know."  It was the first time he had called him dad in years.  Sometimes he says Howard, but mostly, he doesn't say anything at all.  It's a truce, of sorts, maybe a peace offering.  Proof that he really does understand, said in the only language that the two of them know.  "Pass me that wrench, will you?"

 

 

In the end, that's what he thinks about, in the few moments he has before and he is scrambling to figure out his last words to his son, the memory he had left him with.  Whatever they had been they were no so important that he could remember the sound through his increasing panic, but he does remember that- the fleeting smile, the sound of his son calling after him, the few minutes they had spent together down in the workshop where he slid pieces of machinery across the table ( _he does not like being handed things_ ) and they watched the pieces come together, this time in a shape that is vaguely dog-like.  

There is a hand on him, dragging him out in the car, the grip so strong that Howard can feel his bones breaking under the pressure.  It's metal, and even as he is thrown to the ground, he registers the fact that they had done a shoddy job, because the parts were disjointed, not smooth like Howard would have made them.  Not life like, as if they left this person half a monster on purpose.

He recognizes him, and there are a million thoughts flitting through his mind, all his memories crashing together- Steve under the ice in his half death, Tony yelling at him from the other side of the workshop, telling him that this is not the life he wanted, his wife screaming in the car beside him for help that would not come and would not be enough, anyways, Peggy's voice in his mind telling him to fight,  _fight back, Howard damn it, you're always telling me that I was tough enough to be born a man, maybe its your turn to act like one,_ and he tries, he does, but he had never been a fighter and his hands slip off the metal, anyways, his fingers break in the struggle just like they had in his dream with the never ending glass, but in the dream there was never any pain, and this, god, this was pain-

And the war, also, everything he had been trying to forget crashing back to him at one with a glimpse of one face.  "Bucky,"  He breathes, even though there is no recognition at the name, and he closes his eyes, because he does not want to remember his friend like this, not when the person he used to be had been so kind.  He had tripped over his own feet the first time he had met him, and it was only on the third time they were together and Steve left them alone that Bucky had really opened up, asking him about the expo and the flying car and if it would really work, and Howard hadn't wanted to disappoint him and he still had thought it would work, never thought Bucky would even live long enough to know it is a lie, so he had said  _sure, Buck, within a year_ and then he promised to take him for a ride when he got back home.  If he got back home.  And it seems like he had.  "Bucky, please."

 _Bucky, please, bucky, I'm sorry, wake up, wake up, wake up, don't hurt my wife, she doesn't know anything, she doesn't need to be on your list, I'm so sorry, this is my fault, I'm sorry that I let them turn you into this, it was supposed to make you into something good, you never were the kind of person who would have stayed in that war if Steve hadn't been leading the way, you only ever wanted to do right by him and now he's_ _gone and somewhere along the line you turned into this and it all comes back to me, and I'm sorry._

He is trying to say it but there is no air, nothing left to give, no reason left to fight.  He can hear Maria screaming and in his mind he can see Tony smile that fleeting smile, and he is still hearing Peggy asking him if he had any luck at finding Steve and him saying no right before making a promise he couldn't keep.

 _It's okay,_ he thinks in those last seconds, where he loosens his grip and tells himself that it was finally time to give in, that no matter what happened in this world, it was for someone else to fight against.  Peggy, Steve, himself- they had done their part.  Maybe, finally, it was his turn to rest.

 

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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